A Cheap Pine Box
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: S3/4. It would've been easier if Dean had been dead, but he wasn't. Buried in a field in Illinois, his soul was not at rest and for Sam and Bobby, the days and weeks and months that followed were an unbearable struggle to find a way to get him out or find a way to accept that nothing would be the same and their pain would never diminish. No slash. No spoilers.


**A Cheap, Pine Box**

* * *

_**May 2, 2008**_

Dead. Gone. Dead. Gone. Dead. Gone. The words played over and over his head, until they were utterly devoid of meaning, as mindless as a drum beat in a bad school band.

He didn't know how long he'd been kneeling there, but the warmth had died out of his brother's flesh, and the blood on Dean's clothes had dried to crusts. _Too long_.

Dead.

Gone.

He closed his eyes, feeling the lids swollen and sore, rimmed and gritty with salt, the ache behind them as strong as ever.

He needed Bobby.

But Bobby wasn't here, he thought, his brow wrinkling. Bobby'd hit the town's water supply and Dean had told him to get the hell out when he was done. Bobby wasn't here.

He could call.

The thought slid in and he nodded. That was something he could do. He could call Bobby. He struggled to pull his cell from his pocket, unwilling to release his hold on Dean's body, finally yanking at the jacket to get the goddamned thing out. Speed dial two. One was Dean.

Distantly he could hear a ringing, then a voice. He looked down at the phone in his hand, still lying limp on his thighs and raised it slowly. Bobby's voice, sounding exasperated now, blasted into his ear.

"Bobby?"

"Sam?" The voice dropped in pitch and volume instantly. Did he sound that bad?

"Yeah. I need … I need you," Sam said slowly, staring at the broken glass that littered the floor by the French doors, the limp and broken body of the woman first possessed by one demon, then by another.

"Sam? Is – where are you?"

"In the house, Bobby."

"I'm on my way, son. Just stay there, alright? Don't move." The line cut out and he lowered the phone back to his lap, watching it until the screen light went out.

How could he move? His brother was … dead. Gone. Dead. Gone. Dead.

Gone.

* * *

Bobby looked at the house as he pulled up in front of it, turning the engine off, the silence of the suburban street broken only by the tick of the cooling metal of the motor. Every window was dark. He'd been driving for twelve hours, hopped up on fear and anxiety and caffeine. He knew what he'd see when he walked through that door. Knew what was waiting for him. Somewhere, deep inside where he kept all the feelings that were too powerful to let out, something howled in pain. He ignored it, as he'd been ignoring it for hours and straightened his cap. He would feel later.

He got out of the Nova and walked to the trunk, unlocking it and taking out the tarp that lay on the top of the weapons. He tucked it under his arm and walked up the path, pushing open the front door. The house was silent.

"Sam?" He couldn't raise his voice above a whisper, and his lips thinned. In this house, Dean … it wasn't right to raise his voice. He walked to the first doorway, on the left hand side of the hall. The frame and big panes of the French door were smashed and shattered. His hand found the light switch and the overhead light came on.

Sam knelt on the floor, his arms wrapped around his brother. Next to the broken door, Ruby's meatsuit was staring sightlessly at ceiling. Bobby's gaze barely registered her as he stared at Sam, at the man he held. Cold was rising up through him as his eyes took in the rents and tears in Dean's clothing, edged with blood, the dark, maroon smears and pools of blood that stained the floor, the dead white of Dean's skin.

Dead.

Gone.

His chest was constricting, his throat closing up. This was the second time he'd looked at a dead Winchester boy. Why had it been easier to stay focussed when Sam had died? _Because Dean needed you so much_, the answer whispered. Now it was Sam who was broken. Bobby ground his teeth together, the muscle at the point of his jaw leaping into bold relief. He could feel later.

He crossed to Sam, kneeling down beside him and resting a hand lightly on the young man's shoulder. Under his fingers the muscles were like iron, tightly contracted.

"Sam."

Sam looked up at him slowly. His eyes were red and swollen, clean tracks cut through the grime on his face, a face twisted in agony, in the mute pain of a wounded animal.

Bobby nodded, looking into those eyes. The hole in Sam was echoed in the hole inside himself. A hole that had once been filled by a cocky, mouthy young man, a walking bundle of contradictions, who could aggravate the crap of anyone and yet had commanded the unswerving loyalty of all those he'd met.

"Get me some sheets, Sam," Bobby said softly.

Sam looked down. He didn't want to let go of Dean, his arm still wrapped around his brother's shoulders. Bobby's hand tightened gently.

"It's alright. I'll look after him. Go get the sheets, Sam, so we can get outta here."

Sam pulled in a deep breath, his eyes closing. He let it out slowly, easing his arm from beneath Dean's body, carefully laying him back on the floor. His muscles ached. His chest ached. He closed his eyes as he staggered to his feet, his legs cramped and bloodless from being in the one position for hours on end. The pain was unnoticeable, swamped by the other, deeper pain. He stumbled over Ruby's body – Ruby's meatsuit – as his boots crunched over the broken glass in the doorway.

Bobby looked down at Dean. His eyes were closed, but his face still held an expression of fear, frozen in his last moments. Lifting the edge of his jacket away, Bobby looked fixedly at the long wounds transecting his chest and stomach, seeing the swollen and torn organs that lay within them. He couldn't breathe, and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force the feelings that were rising, filling him with the shriek of a black tornado, back down into the depths. He had things he needed to do. Things that had to be done for Dean. He could feel later.

They wrapped the body in the clean, white sheets, and then in the tarp, Sam picking it up carefully, and carrying it to the black car. Bobby wanted them to go in his car, come back for the Impala, but Sam shook his head. Dean would go in his car, only ever in his car. That was how it was.

* * *

_**May 3, 2008**_

The small farmhouse sat in the middle of nowhere, not even visible from the road. Half the roof had gone, and the floorboards creaked ominously as they moved around the kitchen.

Bobby didn't know why they were here. Sam had turned off the interstate with barely any warning, and he'd followed him down the off ramp and along a dozen small roads before the black car had turned abruptly onto the rutted and pot-holed gravel road that led up to the house.

On the table, Dean's body was sprawled, nothing more now than a shell, cleaned of the blood that had covered most of it, the shredded clothing cut away. A clean, whole black t-shirt, jeans and socks covered him now, and Bobby watched, an uneasy frown pulling his brows together as Sam finishing lacing the heavy brown boots. The green jacket hung over the back of the chair and they manoeuvred Dean's flaccid form into it. Rigor had come and gone.

"We should burn him, Sam," Bobby said tentatively, as Sam straightened up and looked around the kitchen.

"No."

"He's a hunter, he deserves a pyre," Bobby pressed.

"No." Sam's gaze brushed over him, and he felt a chill snake down his spine at the emptiness in it.

"Sam …"

"I said no, Bobby." Sam picked up Dean's bag. "He needs his body. When I get him back, he'll need his body."

Bobby watched him walk out the door, the uneasiness in his gut spreading.

* * *

_**May 4, 2008**_

The clearing was small, maybe a dozen yards across. The sun was getting real warmth as the year inched along, and they'd stripped to the waist, their sweat slick over their bodies as they cleared the turf, and broke through the crusted, rock-filled soil beneath.

Sam dug like an automaton, the shovel blade cutting through and filling, the loosened soil thrown out of the hole to land on the growing pile to one side. Bobby stopped for a moment, wiping the sweat from his face, blinking as it stung his eyes. He'd tried to talk to the boy the previous night, but Sam had answered in monosyllables, and after a a while, Bobby had given up.

It wasn't the same as when he'd tried to talk to Dean. Dean's anger and fear and grief had been … savage. Driven, he now knew, by the self-loathing the young man had felt at failing his family, failing his brother. Sam's feelings … were different. There was a fury there that didn't seem directed at anything he could see. And it was hidden. Mostly hidden. Dean hadn't hidden anything, it had all come spilling out, splashing over everything around him.

He glanced at the box, resting beside the hole. Sam had picked it up yesterday afternoon. A cheap, pine box that would rot in the ground in months. He didn't know why Sam had chosen it. He couldn't bring himself to ask.

Sighing, he turned back to the hole, driving his shovel into the hard sub-soil, levering it back and forth until it was full of earth. He pitched it out, the loosened soil falling over the growing pile.

Sam stopped when the hole was four foot deep. Bobby watched him throw the shovel out in surprise.

"Sam, this ain't deep enough."

"Yeah, it is, Bobby. He won't be down there long." Sam turned and reached his hand down, and Bobby took it, letting the boy drag him up and out. "Help me."

They lifted the box, one at each end of the hole – the _grave_, Bobby forced himself to say it – and lowered it as far as they could. They let go of the ends and the box fell the rest of the way, the thump as it hit the hard earth bottom of the grave making them both flinch away. Bobby looked up at Sam, his vision blurring and saw Sam's face harden and smooth out as he got to his feet and picked up the shovel, lifting the first load and throwing it down onto the box.

"Sam … you don't want to, mebbe, say anything?"

Sam's head snapped up, his eyes dark, the emptiness like a hole. "This is temporary, Bobby. It doesn't end here," he said tonelessly and picked up another shovelful of dirt, throwing it down.

Bobby got to his feet, and picked up his shovel. Dean was dead. It did end here. But the man on the other side of the grave was a Winchester, and the lot of them were nothing if not stubborn. He tipped the dirt into the hole and said his goodbyes silently, feeling his tears spill over and track down his cheeks.

* * *

_**May 5, 2008**_

"_Sam! Sammy!" The words tore out of a throat that was torn, fluttering the hanging threads of flesh that still clung to the shattered windpipe._

_Wind howled through the vast, open space, hot wind rising from deeper in the earth and funnelled through a thousand twisting tunnels, bursting out of the rock arteries and carrying the flickering, unseen demons overhead._

_The table stood in the middle of a cavern that had no walls, no ceiling, just wind and space filled with the smells of death and blood and brimstone, with the ever-present wrenching screams of the damned, with the agonising pain that filled the soul strapped down to it._

_Blood and bone. Skin and nerve, muscle and tendon and sinew. None of it was real. All of it was real. The razor was real. The acid, that sluiced along the open wounds, burning so deeply, was real. The wheels and pulleys and blocks and chains, that pulled the bones from the skeletal frame, they were real._

_One eye lay against the cheek, tethered by the blood vessels, looking down. The other, still in the socket, rolled ceaselessly, the eyelid cut away, the deep green of the iris filmed in blood._

"_Somebody help me!" The scream rose in pitch and volume as the razor excoriated the flesh from the rib cage, and the cutters snapped through the ribs, one by one._

Sam lay shivering, curled tightly around himself, on the double bed in the back bedroom. His throat was coated with bile and the stink of his vomit rose from beside the bed, the bucket he'd set there half full again. He didn't notice it, not any more. He was awake but the sense memories of the nightmare were strong and his hands clenched in the soft fabric of his brother's shirt.

He'd cleaned out the bedroom when they'd returned to Sioux Falls, needing somewhere private, somewhere hidden for himself. The nightmare came whenever he was sleeping. He'd tried a few things to shut it out … drinking, sleeping pills … none of it worked. He wasn't sure how long he'd last on the amount of sleep he was getting. The thought didn't raise much interest.

It could just be his imagination, he thought, his mind jittering with the images that clung to him long after the dream had ended. But he didn't think so.

He waited for the last of the horrors to fade, back into the deepest recesses of his mind, then pushed himself upright, fingers finally releasing their grip on the grey tee shirt in his hands. He felt the familiar agitation, thrumming through his nerves, to be out, to be hunting for the answer, for the spell or device or monster that could take him down there, and free his brother. It was out there, somewhere, he knew. And he wouldn't find it sitting here at Bobby's, the nightmares sapping his strength, his grief sapping his will.

The well of pain was bottomless and he didn't have the time to let it out, _Dean_ didn't have the time. He couldn't sit with Bobby and weep for his brother. He had to get him out of there. It was a mistake, Dean being down there. He had to fix it. He couldn't even let Bobby grieve for the man he'd loved like a son. It was too final, Bobby's grief, too much like giving up. He wasn't going to give up. He would go to the ends of the earth, or further, to find the way.

Running his hands through his hair abruptly, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stared at the faded floral wallpaper on the opposite wall. He had to get out. Sitting here wasn't helping. Every day was another day Dean was down there. Sam swallowed roughly as the images from his night terrors inched closer, rubbing his hands over his face, pressing brutally against the bones as if he could force himself into erasing them.

He got up, picking up his clothes from the floor where they'd fallen last night and yanking them on impatiently. He needed to find them, the hellspawn who would tell him how to rescue Dean. He was alone now, and he needed to remember that. Alone he could be stronger. Alone he could do whatever he had to. Alone he could live with himself, with the dark fury and the fear of what ran through his veins, not seeing it reflected in the eyes of another.

* * *

Bobby sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the wall. He couldn't shake the grip of the nightmare that had crept into his mind like a thief as he'd slept. Even after Karen, he'd never had a dream like that, a dream where he could smell, could taste, a dream that had shaken his core and split him apart.

He leaned on the nightstand to get up, feeling his legs trembling as they took his weight. The shock was slowly wearing off, and he could feel the tide of despair behind it.

From the moment he'd met the boys, he'd known that Dean was different, different from his brother, different from other kids. He hadn't been sure how or why, back then, but it had opened his heart in a way that no one else had been able to, in some ways not even Karen had gotten into him so deep.

He'd been terrified, the first time John had dropped them off. Terrified of his past, terrified of the responsibility that had come with them. Dean had shown him the way of being a parent, in that casually practical confidence of his, treating his little brother with a mixture of disdain and overpoweringly protective love. Bobby had watched them grow, watched them fight, watched Dean's sense of responsibility widen as his self-confidence had somehow shrunk.

The boy had had nightmares of spectacular proportions and had kept most of them inside himself. The few times he'd allowed Bobby close enough to comfort him had been when the terrors had been too much for even him to handle alone. They'd all revolved around the same thing, pretty much. A load too heavy for a boy. The fear that all hunters had that they might've made it out this time, but there was always the next time. Losing his father. Losing his brother.

By fifteen, Dean had learned to keep his screams inside. And he'd no longer mentioned his dreams, good or bad, to anyone else. And it had been the last year Bobby had seen them, until they were grown men.

He'd never understood the way Dean'd thought of himself. Never understood how it was even possible that the boy had considered his life so valueless, in comparison to his father's, his brother's.

There'd been signs of it, when he'd been a kid. Not many, but there'd been a few. He should've brought them up, forced them out when he'd seen them, he thought wearily. Could've, should've. Didn't. Crying over might-have-beens had never been his style, but if he could go back, it was one thing he would've done so different.

He wanted a drink.

* * *

_**May 8, 2008**_

Sam drove without thinking, without feeling. For two days, he'd played Dean's tapes in the car, trying to find some way to feel his brother, to be closer to understanding him. He'd had to give it up. He couldn't face listening to anything else though. Dean's ghost lived in the car, and he would hear his brother's derogatory comments again in his head if he tried.

He drove until the lines blurred and then he pulled over, sleeping half-sitting behind the wheel, or sometimes, curled along the back seat. The nightmares came almost straight away now, and he would jerk awake, his heart sledging against his ribs, mouth dry, sweat coating him and his body trembling. In the car, the familiar smells and sights brought a perverse comfort, and a torturous reminder. Dead and gone. Four days under the ground now. He couldn't shake off those thoughts, couldn't face them, so he'd get back behind the wheel and start the engine and drive again.

It had come as a shock to him, when he'd gotten into the car – _this _car – after burying Jess, to find that his brother hadn't really changed. Maybe a couple of things had shifted, but really not that much. They'd travelled across the country, finding jobs, looking for their father, and had fallen back into the same old patterns, for the most part. _He'd_ changed. Stanford had changed him. _Jess_ had changed him. But Dean had remained the same. Loyal, brave, reckless … hidden.

He'd said … _it wasn't me_, in the grey dawn light in the car park of the mental hospital. But it had been him, a part of him, that part that was fury all the time. And Dean had known it. He'd never held it against his brother, but Sam knew that he'd known it. He'd said … _I don't wanna hurt you_, and he'd handed Dean a gun. And Dean had told him that he couldn't. His brother had protected him, had protected him and believed in him, and given him every chance, every time. His brother had brought him back from the dead and sold his soul to make sure he'd lived.

He didn't remember when Dean had started putting himself in between his little brother or his father and anything that might threaten them. It had always been that way. He didn't remember a time when Dean had thought of himself first, his family second.

_I don't want you to worry about me, Dean; I want you to worry about you. I want you to give a crap that you're dying!_

It hadn't made any difference. Dean's choice had been clear, to him. He'd done what he'd always done. And left his brother to carry a load that he couldn't take, couldn't lift, couldn't bear.

_You're a hypocrite, Dean! How did you feel when Dad sold his soul for you? 'Cause I was there. I remember. You were twisted, and broken. And now you go and do the same thing. To me. What you did was selfish._

His brother had admitted it. He couldn't have lived if Sam had died. He'd said he was tired. He'd said a lot of things. Sam'd had the impression that Dean hadn't thought about what it meant, what was going to happen. Not until later. Not until much later.

He swerved to the side of the road, foot stamping on the brake, the car fishtailing wildly from side to side as the tyres hit the gravel. When it stopped, he threw himself out, running as hard as he could back the way he'd come, the road empty and dark, the countryside empty and dark around him. He ran until he couldn't breathe, until he couldn't see.

"You fucking sonofabitch!" he screamed into the night. "You had no right!"

He fell to the ground, doubled over on the shoulder, bone-deep shudders rippling through him as pain tore at him from the inside and filled him, so much pain that he wished he could die from it, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists by his sides, tears pouring down his face.

* * *

Bobby tipped his head back against the couch and opened his eyes. He couldn't see too well. His fingers tightened around the glass they held and he lifted it slowly and carefully to his mouth, feeling a little of the liquid spill down one side into his beard as he tried to make his muscles do as they were told.

Sam had left … yesterday, was it? … he couldn't remember and it wasn't important anyway. He'd stayed as sober as he could for the boy, but now he had the house to himself, empty and dark and alone, no one to judge him for what he was doing … no one to care about it.

He knew he should be doing things … knew he should be getting on with things … but none of it was important. Only shutting down the pain was important, because he couldn't take it, couldn't take how it was eating him up, how no matter what he tried to think about, or which way he turned, there was another memory, another tear-stained, pain-filled memory and he had no strength left to fend them off.

Was there a way to numb the pain? A way to cauterise his feelings, his nerve endings, stop it, make it go away? He couldn't find it, couldn't get relief, not even for a few minutes to help him deal.

Sleep brought terror and he struggled to find a balance between drinking enough for nothing to matter and not drinking so much that he would pass out, because the nightmares had teeth and claws like he couldn't believe, and they tore him to shreds when his eyes fell shut and his armour dropped away.

He'd prayed. He hadn't prayed since he'd been a little kid, but he'd prayed for help, for something to help him. In his heart, he knew he couldn't be helped. Dean was dead, dead in a box in a field in Illinois. But he wasn't. He wasn't at peace. He wasn't _dead_ … dead.

Tipping forward, the glass falling from his hand and the whiskey spilling out over the rug, Bobby hunched into himself, the keening pulled, against his will, from his chest, from his heart, from his soul, burying his head in his arms, wracked by the agony of his thoughts, the images of his nightmares, the anguish of knowing that the son of his heart would never find peace.

* * *

_**May 15, 2008**_

The hotel was below even Dean's lowest standards, the air-conditioner leaning drunkenly out from the wall, cockroaches scurrying across the floor brazenly in the light, the paint peeling and the ceiling sagging and water-stained.

Sam sat at the small table, his head in his hands, oblivious to his surroundings.

_Don't you understand, Sam? It's not about your soul. Dean's in Hell, right where we want him._

He didn't understand. He couldn't understand. It had been his last shot, summoning the demon and offering himself in a straight swap and he didn't understand how it had gone wrong.

Why would Lilith throw away the opportunity to have him? Everything they'd seen, she'd been salivating to get her hooks into him, to destroy him completely. None of the hellspawn had paid the slightest attention to Dean, other than to regard him as an annoyance when he upset their plans.

The bottle beside him was a quarter-full and he picked it up, tipping the last of the clear liquid down his throat, ignoring the burn of the alcohol, ignoring everything but getting ahead of the desolation that had not diminished at all in the last two weeks.

There was a muted thunk as the bottle dropped to the linoleum floor, his fingers releasing the neck involuntarily. He couldn't think. Not sober and not drunk. He had nothing. No leads. No resources. Not even a steady enough fucking hand to hit what he was aiming at.

He lurched to his feet, and stumbled over the bottle, his foot sending it spinning away, the chair crashing over behind him. He just made the edge of the bed, falling onto it as the raw liquor hit his bloodstream and pain and thought and feeling vanished together.

_Sulphur._

_Red light, pulsing like a living thing._

_Blood in his mouth._

_A scream, rising higher and higher, vibrating through the remains of his chest._

_AGONY._

"_I can make it stop, Dean. All this pain. All this torment. I can make it all go away." The voice isn't precisely a voice. Like a buzzing in his mind, it infiltrates every corner, teasing out images that shock and horrify, staining him, branding him, drowning him in a thick, foetid shroud of disgust._

"_All you have to do is say 'yes', Dean. Just one little word and it all goes away. Pick up the razor, and you never have to feel this way again."_

"_No."_

"_Are you sure?"_

_The white hot metal cauterises what it touches as it is forced into his body, piercing his organs, steam and the smell of cooking meat escaping the deepest cuts and tears that criss-cross his abdomen. There is no nervous system to shut down in overload at the excruciating torment. Only his memories of his nerves, his memories of his body. And so there is no escape from the infinite anguish._

"_Motherfucking … hellspawn. No. NO!"_

"_Well, tomorrow's another day."_

Sam wakes shrieking, the sound bouncing around the small room's walls. He twists blindly around and manages to get most of his stomach's contents into the trash can beside the bed, the pungent reek of alcohol filling the room instantly. He can't stop the desperate heaving of his stomach, dry-retching convulsively.

"Jesus! Keep it down in there, ya goddamn asshole!" The hoarse shout is accompanied by a volley of pounding on the wall between the rooms.

Sitting on the bed, staring at nothing, shivering violently, Sam's hands opened and closed on their own. Looking down at them he realised they were empty.

_Where's the _shirt_?_

Dean's bag was sitting by the door, and Sam lunged toward it, dropping to his knees beside it, fingers fumbling with the zipper, almost ripping it open, the shirt on the top. His hands closed in its soft folds and he buried his face in it, his brother's scent … of sweat and gun oil, grease and leather and the fainter bite of whiskey … surrounding him.

* * *

Bobby woke on the bathroom floor, his head pounding like a rodeo, his tongue thick and coated in something unspeakable. He looked at the base board on the wall behind the toilet and wondered if it was worthwhile getting up. Sunlight shone weakly through the grime of the window above him, too bright even at floor level and he dragged his arm from his side to cover his eyes.

It wasn't getting easier. It was getting harder.

"_He was right, Bobby," Dean turned and looked at his brother, bound now to the chair and under the devil's trap on Bobby's ceiling. "I can't kill him, not even to save someone else. Not even to save myself."_

_Bobby looked at him, his expression hidden beneath the shadow of his cap. "That only tells me how much you love him, Dean."_

_He watched duck of the man's head, the way he looked away. Uncomfortable, uneasy at having his feelings exposed. Bobby sighed._

"_If ya hadn't burned John, I'd go jump on his grave," he continued. "Of all the fool things to put in your head, that one was the worst he coulda come up."_

_Dean's head snapped around, eyes narrowing a little. "He expected me to do my job."_

"_He put a time-bomb in you and lit the fuse."_

"_He could have done it." Dean turned away, shoulders slumping slightly._

"_An' what does that tell you, Dean? Anything good?" Bobby said, impatient now with the younger man's inability to see what he needed to. "You were right, Sam hasn't turned into something else, he's just possessed."_

_Dean shook his head. "It's not that, Bobby."_

"_Then for Christ's sake tell me what it is, because this all this mopin' around is makin' me wonder if I should be getting you some hair curlers for ya next birthday!"_

_The insult stung, as he'd hoped it would._

"_What if Dad was right? What if he does turn into something really bad? Who's gonna take him down? You?"_

_Bobby grinned humourlessly at him. "If I have to, I guess."_

_Dean scowled at him and walked away._

"_Dean, you're lookin' at this all ass-about," Bobby said patiently. "Until that moment comes, what we need to be doing is figuring out how to save him. You did the right thing. You knew it wasn't him, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Trust your instincts and we got a shot at this."_

_Dean nodded, leaning up against the desk, his head bowed and arms crossed over his chest. Bobby looked at him, watching the wheels turn behind that too-expressive face, unsure of how to defuse the lifetime's adherence to responsibility that had been graven into the boy's bones._

_After a moment he lifted his head, and Bobby could see his throat working, the shimmer in his eyes. "The day you have to put Sam down, Bobby? Or I do? Put a bullet in me at the same time, okay?"_

Bobby rolled cautiously onto his back, the cold tiles easing the heat at the base of his neck. He should've said something then, should've had it out with him then, but Dean had turned away and squared his shoulders and woken Sam.

It wasn't just the sense of responsibility, he knew. It was the way Dean saw himself. Maybe the way he'd seen himself since he was a little kid, running out of a burning house with a baby in his arms. One role. Guardian. Protector. And that was all.

_Well, ya ain't doing much of a job of that now, are ya, boy?_ He thought sourly. Sam devastated and gone off somewhere, probably to do something as reckless and stupid as his brother had done. The demon army still at large across the land, and omens everywhere he looked.

_What about you, old man? You doing any better? You doing your job?_ The voice sounded a little like Dean's, deep and bitter.

No. He wasn't. He was lying on his bathroom floor, stinking of liquor and vomit and feeling sorrier for himself than he'd ever felt in his life. He let out a long exhale and rolled back onto his side, feeling his head throb violently and his stomach leap again. He levered himself onto one elbow and waited for it all to calm down. He didn't know if it was worth it, to get up, get cleaned up. He thought not. But he'd given enough time to feelin' sorry for himself.

* * *

_**June 10, 2008**_

The house had been condemned. Sam'd checked it out before he'd decided to use it. Most of the back walls were missing, greenery growing in through the broken lathes. It was at the end of the road, and a long way from the nearest neighbour and it was quiet. No one complained about the noise he made.

He looked at the gun in his hand and shook his head slightly. He was too drunk to be cleaning fire-arms, he knew it. It didn't seem to matter, though. He'd cleaned every one he had, only forgetting to unload one of them. There was a hole in the wall on the other side of the room from that little mistake. If he blew his head off, would anyone care?

He was getting some variety in the nightmares now. Sometimes he dreamed about being in the box with Dean's body, down in the ground, his hand sinking into his putrescent flesh and his brother's eyes opening, filled with fire.

The alcohol wasn't doing much to stop them. It could keep the images blurred, hard to make out, when he was awake. But that was about it.

He hadn't given up, but he didn't know what he was doing. He killed demons, tortured them until they admitted that they couldn't help him, then killed them. He read through the books he'd collected, searched the 'net for hours. There was nothing there. Nothing of any use to him.

Every day, every damned day that he sat on his ass and got drunk and did nothing, his brother was being tortured. The dreams … the nightmares … he couldn't have come up with those images, couldn't have imagined those agonies. And they were decreasing in frequency. As if … his mind shied away from the idea, but it was there … as if Dean was forgetting. Forgetting his brother. Forgetting his connections. Forgetting his humanity.

He stood abruptly, knocking the box of brushes and files from the table to the floor, stepping over it in his rush to get outside, to get away from himself.

He was losing his humanity too. He could feel the fury inside of him growing and deepening and widening with every day that passed. He couldn't separate the pain of losing his brother from that anger anymore, it was single blood-red ocean, filling him up and demanding that he do more, go further, try harder, become …

Become … what, he wondered?

He slumped at the table, the urgency to leave gone as suddenly as it had come. He picked up the Taurus and looked down the barrel, his thumb on the hammer. It was a good gun. It would only take one bullet in the chamber. Anyone could forget the round in the chamber.

The knock on the door, peremptory and loud, made him jump and reach for the sawn off pump that sat at his right hand. No one knew about this place, not even Bobby. He stood up and walked down the hallway, automatically skirting the rubble and drifts of leaves and rubbish, his boot soles silent on the floor. He opened the door and looked down at a short brunette. She stared up at him for a second with dark eyes, her expression wry as she waved a piece of paper at him.

"Proof. This body is one hundred percent socially conscious. I recycle. Al Gore would be proud."

_Ruby._

* * *

The kitchen had stunk. New life forms had been growing in the abandoned pots and pans that were stacked, forgotten, over the stove top, counter and in the sink. It took him two days to get it back to something that wouldn't kill him when he walked in.

Getting up was hard. But sleeping had gotten easier; the nightmares weren't coming as much now. After three straight nights of dreamless sleep, he'd wondered why, and then had stopped himself from looking down that path, a formless anxiety surrounding it, a whispering instinct in his gut telling him that it was better not to think too much about it.

The phone rang, Rufus' voice uncharacteristically gentle on the other end of the line.

"You back, man?"

"Not really." Bobby rubbed his knuckles over one brow, pushing the cap up. "What do you want?"

"Just checkin' in," Rufus said casually. "Might be up that way in a day or two, wondered if you felt like getting beat at some poker?"

"Not yet." Bobby sighed and looked around. "In a while."

"'Kay. You eating?"

"Yeah, I'm eatin', still alive, ain't I?" Bobby growled. He didn't need the added aggravation of someone's worry.

"Good. Well …"

Bobby could hear the reservations in his friend's voice. He chewed on the corner of his lip, letting the silence draw out a bit.

"I'm fine, Rufus. Just not sociable right now," he said finally. Conversation wasn't worth a damn.

"Right. I'll see you then."

"Yeah." He hung up the phone and shook his head. Lucky the sonofabitch hadn't called a few days earlier.

_A winter's afternoon, the fire lit and keeping the room warm and cheerful, the boys sprawled on the sofa watching some kind of kung fu movie on the television._

"_Hey Bobby, when're you gonna teach us all this stuff?" Dean's voice, starting to break, rose and fell over the sentence, Sam'd exploded into a fit of laughter and gotten a cuff on the back of his head._

_Bobby had snorted. "I'll teach ya the ancient art of Tiger Crawling on the Ceiling when you two can bag me a couple of deer and have 'em skinned and dressed by dinnertime."_

_He'd looked over at them. Boys wrestling on the sofa, bright and strong with uncomplicated joy in life, Dean's grin wide over his face._

He shook his head again as the memory tightened his chest and got up. He had a shitload of laundry to get on with.

* * *

_**July 4, 2008**_

Sam listened to the demon beside him breathing softly. It was the only sound he could hear in the otherwise silent house. He lay on his back, staring up at the room's ceiling, his eyes absently tracing the contours and cartography of the water stains across the plaster.

_Jesus, Sammy, what the hell do you think you're doing?!_ Dean's voice snapped in his head, making him twitch slightly.

What was he doing? Ruby had promised to teach him all she knew, to make him strong enough to take on Lilith and be able to destroy her. Last time pays for all, Dean, he whispered to his dead brother. I'll kill her and maybe then it'll all be over.

He was getting stronger, very slowly. In the basement of the house, there was a devil's trap painted on the floor and demon after demon had died in there. Most of them from Ruby's impatience and the thick serrated knife, he thought ruefully, but some of them he had drawn out and killed, the charcoal smoke of their essence burning up on the floor, their meatsuits alive.

He had pushed his pain down, and finally his fury had an outlet, a purpose … and that felt better, that felt like he wasn't about to fly off the edge of the world with its monstrous strength pushing him further and further away from everything he believed in. The wild black horse was finally in harness, doing its work.

He turned his head to look at the woman beside, long dark hair inky against the white pillow. He could lose himself in her, and it wasn't gentle and sweet, as it had been with Jess, it was edged with anger and filled with desperation but it was still a way of pushing down his feelings and memories, and being able to sleep at night.

Sometimes, anyway.

He still had nightmares. Not so many of his brother screaming in Hell now. He dreamt of blackened lands, covered in ash and bones and Dean wandering them, his face confused and bereft. He dreamt of Lilith, eyes milky white and a burning white light coming from her hands and flowing over him, flowing over everything, colour bled from everything it touched until it crumbled into ash and was swept away into a red-tinged sky. He dreamt of a pine box, under the ground, the skin of his brother's body slipping from the bones, but the face still turning to him, dark green eyes accusing … I died for you to be safe, to be alive … what are you doing, Sammy? What the hell are you doing?

He closed his eyes and made a deliberate effort to clear his mind.

The strain … in his mind, his brain … of using the abilities was immense. _The mind is a muscle_. He remembered the line from a book, read a long time ago. The mind is a muscle like any other. Use it, develop it, strengthen it.

He was trying. Painkillers couldn't touch the headaches that came with every exertion of that muscle. Ruby's blood helped, a little.

_You're drinking demon blood, Sammy, goddamn DEMON blood! I didn't save you so you could turn into a fucking monster, Sam. I didn't condemn myself to an Eternity of torture and agony so that you could turn into what Dad said I might have to kill!_

Sam flinched from the words, rolling onto his side. I'm sorry, Dean…

_Sorry! You're fucking sorry!?_ You're not here! How can I go on when you're not here? When I know what's happening to you? _Don't lay your guilt and shit on me, Sam. You're not a kid anymore, you know what you're doing isn't the right way, Sam, it's not what I died for._

Sam's eyes were screwed tightly shut. Shut up! Just shut up! You're not here!

_I died to save you, Sammy. Didn't that mean anything to you?_

He reached for the bottle sitting on the chair beside the bed, unscrewing the lid with fingers that wouldn't work properly. The first swallow was fire and acid. The next one went down easier. _I'm saving people, Dean, that's what I'm doing. I'm saving people and I'm going to kill Lilith._

* * *

The shutters were closed, the room in a shadowy darkness away from the bright sunshine and life going on outside. Bobby leaned back in his chair, the small glass in his hand, amber liquid levelled despite the angle of the tumbler.

_I couldn't let him die, Bobby. I couldn't. He's my brother._

The memory was powerful, filled with Dean's anguish, and his own. He saw the moment clearly again, felt the rawness of the pain fill his chest, rise into his throat.

_Another summer afternoon, the sunlight so bright in the yard, they'd retreated to the workshop, Bobby going to the battered ancient refrigerator in there and pulling out a beer for himself, a Coke for the boy._

_On the blocks, the pale green T-bird sat silently, waiting for them to get to work on her, make her beautiful and fast and powerful again._

_Bobby slid a sideways glance at Dean._

"_You know, what your daddy said before, Dean –"_

_The boy had looked over at him, one side of his mouth lifting slightly. "S'okay, Bobby, I know he know he didn't mean it the way it came out."_

_The shift in his gaze, cutting away for a second then returning reluctantly told Bobby that was bullshit. Dean was a complicated mess of loyalties, responsibility and personal honour. It made him hard to talk to, to see reason when it came to his father, to his brother._

"_I should have been in the room. I know that," he continued softly, looking down at the floor. "Dad had every right to rip me a new one for that."_

_Bobby scowled. "No, son. Looking after Sam doesn't mean that you're chained to him."_

_Dean said nothing; his hands turning the soda bottle this way and that._

"_It could've happened to any of us, the way it did. You didn't do anything wrong."_

"_Uh huh. But it didn't happen to anyone else, did it?" Dean's voice was thick. "Happened on my watch."_

"_That's the way it falls –"_

"_I'm gonna have a look around, see if I can find the right panel to match this one," Dean said abruptly and got up. He left the soda bottle sitting on the bench and walked out of the workshop, into the yard. Bobby saw his shoulders hunch slightly as he turned right, walking slowly down the alley._

_Balls. Kid was going to die one day from the combination of responsibility and guilt he felt about his life, he thought worriedly. It hadn't been more than bad luck that Dean'd picked that particular time to grab some sodas and ice from the motel vending machines._

Bobby looked at the glass in his hand and tossed back the contents. Another missed opportunity. Another time when if he'd just made that kid listen, he might've gotten through.

He felt cold. _I'm so goddamned sorry, Dean_, he thought, _sorry I didn't tie you to a friggin' chair and make you understand, make you believe. Sorry I didn't take it up with John when I had the chance; make him understand what he'd done to you boys. I hope to hell he knows wherever he's at now._

* * *

_**August 18, 2008**_

Sam rolled over on the bed, legs thrashing in the tangle of sheets that had been shoved to the end.

_He was in darkness, a sense of urgency beating at him, he had to find something, find something important, something important was about to happen, had happened, was happening._

_The darkness began to lighten and he stumbled over rough ground, a familiar, nauseating smell beginning to register. The light that wasn't really light grew and faded, pulsing gently, a giant heartbeat that frightened him more than the growing sense of something wrong, something terrible coming toward him._

_He saw the figure on the stone table, not recognising it. Despair clung to it, and there was nothing but desolation, a deep bleeding wound, in the darkened, bloodied eyes._

"_What do you say, Dean? The offer's still here … stand by my side and help me show these sinners the errors of their ways, give 'em what they deserve." The demon was graceful, despite the cruelly misshapen form, the pupilless silver eyes fixed on the broken thing that lay on the table._

_Sam frowned. Dean? That … wreck was his brother?_

"_Or we can start this all over again. I know you long for rest, Dean. And you deserve it … you know you didn't anything to be sent down here, you just made a choice … it's not like you owe us all this pain and suffering."_

_Dean's head turned slowly from side to side. Sam couldn't see his brother's features in the face that turned toward him, bone and flesh had been pulped, the scalp flayed off leaving a thin red membrane over the skull._

"_Come on, Dean, do you really think you can keep going with this? This is Eternity we're talking about … eternal damnation, eternal agony, eternal flame and pain and suffering. And for what? What are you hanging on for, Dean? For someone to come? Someone to save you?" The demon laughed, the raw, thick sound ringing around the open space, echoing from walls that weren't visible. "No one is coming, Dean. No one is coming to rescue you. No one up there cares about you, Dean, they've all moved on with their lives. This is it, all that you have to look forward to … forever."_

_NO! Sam screamed, his body lunging forward, feeling something stretch and bend against him and hold him back. He fell to his knees and hands._

"_You can be free of the pain, Dean. Free of it forever. All you need to do is say yes."_

_The thing on the table had no throat, its chest had been broken open, the ribs sticking up and the organs removed. The word bubbled out of its mouth nevertheless._

_Sam watched as Dean sat up, restored, whole again, not even a scar to mark the injuries that had been there the second before. His face was tight, hardened._

"_Yes."_

_The demon smiled slowly, and extended its hand, the wink of a straight-edge razor blade between the long multi-jointed fingers._

_As his brother slid off the stone, a woman appeared, bound down to it, shaking with fear, breath catching as she pleaded and begged, and the tears spilled down her face. Sam felt his stomach clench violently as he watched Dean turn back to the table, the razor lifting, the blade sending a flash of reflected light into his eyes._

_The blade dropped, too fast to see, to register, and a high-pitched scream filled the space._

Sam jerked upright in the bed, his heart pounding in his throat. _Dean?_ The dream faded away, and he couldn't hold onto it, couldn't remember what he'd seen that had frightened him so much. Dean had been in it, he knew that.

Ruby stirred beside him. "Wha–"

She rolled over and looked up at him. "Sam? What's wrong?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. I saw Dean …"

"Another nightmare?"

"Yeah, I guess." He dragged in a deep breath. "Something happened. Something … bad."

She pulled him down, wrapping her arms around him. "Just a dream, baby, let it go."

"Something's wrong, Ruby."

"Yeah, you're awake and it's three a.m. and we have a buttload of stuff to do in the morning." She yawned. "So go to sleep."

Sam frowned, something had happened. He could feel it, resonating through his body, shrilling in his mind. He closed his eyes reluctantly.

* * *

Bobby leaned over the engine bay of the Pontiac, tears running down his face, into his beard, dripping onto the quarter panel. His chest felt as if he had steel bands wrapped around it, tightening gradually.

Mebbe he should just accept that the pain wasn't going to go. It never had for Karen.

He'd spent the last month looking for spells or myths or legends to raise a soul from hell, chasing down leads and coming up with nothing. Every idea run down to a dead end, every possibility pursued till it disappeared, had worn him down. Ground him down.

There was no way of letting go. If Dean'd just died, he thought he could've. But knowing where he was, knowing what was happening to him, he couldn't let it go, couldn't stop that endless pain at the knowledge. Dean hadn't deserved that.

He wiped his eyes, chest hitching a little as he managed to get a deeper breath. He straightened up and walked to the bench, the half-full bottle sitting there beckoning him with its promise of blurring and blunting the pain, for a little while anyway.

He sat down next to the bench, fingers clenched around the neck of the bottle. He'd let him down. As he'd let her down. Hadn't been strong, hadn't been brave enough to face John or himself and fight for them.

A part of him – a small, sane part of him – knew that it wasn't true, it hadn't been quite like that, not that cut and dried. Dean had been nine when Bobby had first met him. And was already Sam's guardian, already had that role set into him, into his blood and bone and heart and soul. And Karen … mebbe the demon had gotten in through her sorrow and rage and fear, he didn't know that for sure. But it had gotten in and he'd had no idea of what to do. He'd done what he'd thought was best for them both.

He lifted the bottle and let another mouthful roar softly down his throat. Failures. Mistakes. Loss. It was easy enough to look at them and think that's all there was. It _felt_ as if that's all there was.

"_Hey Bobby, wanna throw the pig around?"_

_Since he'd told the boy that the football leather was pigskin, that's all Dean would call it. He thought it was hilarious._

"_Sure, got about an hour before dark." He'd followed him out onto the flat ground behind the yard, crabbing around the edge until the setting sun wasn't in his eyes. Dean tried every time to get whatever advantage he could. The kid would be a good hunter when he got older._

_Watching him, run and dive, jump high into the air, spin around, arm lifting, the ball soaring straight, spinning like a bullet along its trajectory, he'd felt a happiness he hadn't felt for a long time, suffusing him, filling him up. This is what he'd missed out on, not knowing himself well enough, not understanding, not believing in himself. This astonishing connection that can only happen with children, who are straightforward and honest and who give their love to those who welcome it._

There were good memories. But they hurt as much as the bad ones did. More mebbe.

He wanted him back. Leaning up against a wall, smart-mouthing on some subject or other, eyes filled with warmth and affection, beer bottle swinging insouciantly from two fingers, helping with an engine or fiddling around with the Impala's … wanted to see the dark brows drawn together as he thought around and through some problem, see him teasing his brother, the two of them tight as ticks, even if they were giving each other grief half the time, hear his shout of laughter that could fill the house, see the one-sided smile that always reached his eyes … he wanted him back, both of 'em back, in his house, in his life, next to his heart.

* * *

**END**


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